D.C. Council rewrote the rules on public meetings - and transparency advocates say residents lost

Why this hits home

Most of what Washington's city government actually decides never happens at a podium. It happens in a hallway, a conference room, a pre-meeting conversation where the real trade-offs get sorted out before anyone turns on the cameras. For fifteen years, D.C. law tried to drag some of that into the open. Now the Council has quietly made it easier to keep it closed.

The permanent Open Meetings Clarification Amendment Act of 2025 - Bill 26-208 - cleared the D.C. Council on its final vote on June 23, 2026, and was transmitted to Mayor Muriel Bowser. The bill was transmitted to the mayor with a response due July 13, 2026; the Council's final reading passed 10-2, with a unanimous 13-0 vote on a Chair Phil Mendelson amendment. It is now permanent law, codified into the District's open-government framework.

The stakes are not abstract. This law governs whether you can watch your government think - not just vote.

What the law actually does

The legislation allows councilmembers to meet among themselves and with the mayor in private if no vote is scheduled and no action is being taken. That might sound narrow. It isn't.

Before this change, D.C.'s Open Meetings Act of 2010 drew a hard line. Under the prior rules, it was not permitted for a quorum of councilmembers to discuss any topic - even if no decisions or actions emerged - unless the meeting was open. If a quorum of councilmembers wanted to meet to discuss a topic, advance notice of the meeting needed to be published and the meeting had to be open to or viewable by the public. That meant any gathering of seven or more members of the 13-person Council had to be noticed and streamed.

The new permanent law changes that. It incorporates the temporary changes to the District's open meetings law that have been in effect over the past year, allowing private meetings and conversations among lawmakers as long as no final action is taken.

The legislation prevents D.C. residents from attending meetings between the Council and the mayor, and allows the Council and its committees to shut out the public in any meeting at which no votes will be taken. It also excludes the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council entirely from having to abide by the D.C. Open Meetings Act - allowing a major public safety entity to do its work without public oversight.

That last piece has drawn less attention than it deserves. The CJCC coordinates MPD, the U.S. Attorney, the courts, and the Department of Corrections. It is not a minor board.

A year of emergency workarounds, then a permanent fix

This didn't come out of nowhere. The Council has been running emergency and temporary versions of these same changes since spring 2025, each one cycling through the 90-day and 225-day clocks before the next version kicked in. At its most recent legislative meeting, the Council passed on the first of two necessary votes the permanent version of an open meetings reform bill. The same bill had received a public hearing in April 2025, and had also been previously approved twice as an emergency measure and once previously as a temporary measure.

A separate temporary extension - the Open Meetings Clarification Temporary Amendment Act of 2026, Law Number L26-0153 - took effect August 1, 2026 and expires March 14, 2027. That means the District now has both a permanent statute and a temporary bridge law running in parallel, layering closed-meeting authority on top of itself.

The Council's own explanation for the change is straightforward. Members of the public and the media often criticize the mayor and Council for not working together more freely and frequently. Yet when any meeting between the mayor and a quorum of the Council must be noticed in advance and fully open to the public, one imperative - openness - hamstrings a second - collaboration. That's the institutional logic. The Council says it can't govern efficiently under the old rules.

Two no votes, and what they represent

On the first reading in June, nine members voted yes. Two voted no. Councilmembers Janeese Lewis George (Ward 4) and Charles Allen (Ward 6) voted against the bill. On final reading, the tally was 10-2, with one member not voting.

Allen and Lewis George have been the consistent dissenters throughout this entire cycle. On the temporary extension that passed May 5 - also on an 11-2 vote - only Allen and Lewis George voted no.

Lewis George, who won the Democratic mayoral primary in June 2026 and is nearly certain to be D.C.'s next mayor, has made transparency a campaign marker. Her vote against this bill is now part of the record she'll carry into the mayor's office come January.

The opposition is broad and specific

After the Council's second vote sent the bill to Mayor Bowser, the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia was among several open government advocates that opposed it and signed a letter of opposition. Other opponents included the D.C. Open Government Coalition, Council for Court Excellence, Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association, and Society of Professional Journalists DC Pro Chapter.

That's not a fringe coalition. The MD-DC-DE Press Association represents local newsrooms. The Council for Court Excellence has credibility across party lines. Together they called on Bowser to veto the bill.

Alicia Yass, policy advocacy director at the ACLU of D.C., said: 'Moving deliberations into private breeds the appearance of bad behavior, even if people in our government have no ill intent. It suggests they have something to hide.'

Yass also noted that while the federal administration's actions have received a great deal of attention for their impact on D.C., 'there is a lot happening at the local level, too, from budget decisions to new development to the District's interactions with the federal government. This is no time for more government activity to happen behind closed doors.'

Bowser did not veto the bill. The law is in effect.

Congress is watching - and not neutrally

The federal dimension here is real. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a joint resolution last year specifically to disapprove the temporary version of this legislation. Lee's bill sought to repeal the Council's action exempting themselves from the Open Meetings Act, which he characterized as working around President Trump's executive order to address crime in Washington. That effort didn't advance. But the permanent law now sitting on the books gives Congress a fresh target if it wants one - and under the Home Rule Act, Congress has 30 days after a D.C. law is transmitted to disapprove it.

While D.C. officials frame the legislation as a clarification of existing rules, some argue that it significantly weakens public oversight. By allowing closed-door meetings between the Council and the mayor, the bill raises concerns about transparency, accountability, and public trust in government proceedings.

The Councilmembers who'll govern under these rules aren't the ones who wrote them

Five council seats are on the November 3 general election ballot. Several members who voted for this bill are leaving office. The people who inherit the closed-meeting authority will be, in some cases, different people than those who claimed they needed it.

Lewis George, when she takes the mayor's chair, will be on the other side of this equation entirely. The law that her colleagues passed - over her objection - now allows the mayor to meet privately with council members. She voted no on this as a councilmember. As mayor, she'll be the one walking into those private rooms.

Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who shepherded the permanent bill and passed a last-minute amendment that won unanimous support on June 23, has defended the changes as a matter of operational reality. His amendment didn't gut the bill's core provisions - the permanent measure retains the original core principles of open meetings, that any actions such as votes must occur at public meetings and that the public must receive adequate notice of any such meetings. Votes stay public. Conversations don't have to be.

The DC Open Government Coalition's argument is that the line between a conversation and a decision is exactly where governing actually lives. Most deals are done before the gavel falls.

The next council will hold its first legislative meeting in January 2027. Under the new law, a quorum of its members could, for the first time in fifteen years, meet to discuss any topic they choose without a camera in the room, without a public notice, and without a legal obligation to tell anyone it happened.

What D.C. Residents Should Watch

• Mayor Bowser's final days in office: She did not veto this bill. Watch whether her administration uses the new closed-meeting authority with the Council in its remaining months - and whether any such meetings are disclosed voluntarily.
• Janeese Lewis George's transition posture: She voted no twice. Residents should press her transition team on whether she'll seek to revisit the law after January or govern under it as written.
• Congress's 30-day review window: D.C. laws transmitted to Congress are subject to a disapproval window. The permanent Open Meetings law is now in the congressional review period. Senator Lee's previous disapproval effort failed, but the current House Oversight Committee has shown appetite for intervening in D.C. governance.
• The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council: The new law exempts the CJCC from the Open Meetings Act entirely. Given that the CJCC sits at the center of D.C.'s public-safety coordination - and that MPD's crime data has already been questioned - watch whether advocates push to restore public access to CJCC deliberations separately.
• The temporary bridge law's expiration: Law L26-0153 expires March 14, 2027. The permanent statute (Bill 26-208) doesn't. If a new council wanted to roll back the temporary provisions, they'd have to act before then - and the permanent law would still remain.

Sources: LegiScan - DC B26-0208, Open Meetings Clarification Amendment Act of 2025 | LegiScan - DC B26-0633, Temporary Amendment Act of 2026 | DC Council press release on permanent open meetings revisions | ACLU of D.C. statement, June 23, 2026 | ACLU of D.C. statement, June 2, 2026 | D.C. Open Government Coalition | The DC Line, June 2, 2026 | DC News Now, June 24, 2026 | DC Law Library, § 2-575 | WUSA9